


Though Hell Should Bar The Way

by Esahc



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Alternate Universe: Threshecutioner Karkat, Helmsman Conversion, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Psychological Torture, Sensory Deprivation, medical procedures without consent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-10-25 05:36:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10757811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esahc/pseuds/Esahc
Summary: It's about when you stop being able to feel shit, that you think you maybe fucked up.





	1. The Hanging Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, maybe I'm overthinking it, but just a very general content warning for pmuch this whole entire chapter. mind the tags, let me know if I've missed anything.

It’s three sweeps into your training that you and your cohort get tapped for guard duty. Your brothers complain, but you’re buzzing with energy and ready for something outside of strife drills and scripture lectures. You’ve never felt better than you have here. You have friends, real ones without the hate added in. You got the knowing of family now; the desperate-tight bond of a caste too motherfucking few to last without banding together in the biggest-ever cohort, all in-cahoots and trusting down to the soul. It’s like having a quadrant at your back, only hundreds. 

But schoolfeeds are still schoolfeeds, even when you’re inclade with six other brothers all your agemates and all about as crackpanned dumb as you are, working laboriously on lessons trolls with lusii woulda got done sweeps back, so when you get pulled out the schoolfeeding room and told you and some brothers ‘round your age and older got assigned guard duty on some imperial prisoner transport, on account of you’re a good hand on a club and more experienced brothers are on missions as need more experience, you’re just about buzzing with how excited you are to escape your lessons for the week and a bit it’ll take. 

***

_ You can’t move. Can’t see can’t- There’s something you’re forgetting. It’s gonna be okay. You cling to that thought. It’s gonna be okay. It has to be.  _

***

Rumors and whispers are all over the transport shuttle when you load on. You’re heading deep into the home fleet, the lowblood carrier-ships, where the infantry and threshies and shit get trained up to die at the whim and glory of the empire. Kinda sucks for them, you guess. But wars need fought, is how it got told at you, and you guess it makes sense, even if it makes you kinda sad to think on Tavros and Karkat and them getting into such danger. You hope Tavros got into the cavalreaper support crew like he wanted. You hope Karkat  _ didn’t _ get into the threshicutioners like he wanted. 

So the rumors go there’s some kinda traitor in the trainees, someone feeding information to rebels and draft-dodgers and pirates, or someone passing their chroma as higher’n it oughta be, or (whispered guiltily quiet between the youngest most reckless of you,) it’s the red cult rising again, like your older brothers say it does sometimes, when enough ascensions pass that the lowbloods forget what happened to the  _ last _ wave. You hope it ain’t that. You think some of your friends are the right shades to get caught up as casualties, to hear tell, ‘cause the empress is always wanting to sacrifice the flesh to cut out the cancer. 

***

_ Your nose hurts. You don’t know why that’s so important, when you’re blind and helpless and floating in a nothing-place, but it is, and it does, and you want to sneeze but you can’t.  _

_ Your head feels heavy. There’s a phantom feeling of something that brushes over your scalp. It’s just your hair. It’s just your hair. It’s just- _

***

Your first impulse is to take your clubs to the guards at either side of him. Rage swells in you all strong and possessive in a way you wouldn’t’ve thought to expect. They ain’t been overgentle with him. He’s bruised horns-to-toe, rusty brown-black smudges on his face and his arms. His arms are bound in front of him in old-time shackles, heavy iron bars that ain’t been used since the days of the false prophet. You start forward, hand on a club, and it’s your squad leader that catches you with a hard look. You hiss, but you settle back to your position. You try not to look at how Karkat’s eyes dim as you step back into line, how they caught on the sight of your horns and the sign on your clothes and there was a little spark like maybe there was hope. You don’t tell him with your eyes that it’s gonna be okay as soon as you’re out of this shithole infantry ship, that rules are different on clown ships. 

***

_ It hurts. It hurts, it hurts it hurts it  _ **_hurts._ **

***

“This is a  _ mistake. _ ” You snarl at your sergentormentor, but Seyova just stands there, arms crossed, face like stone. 

“Little brother, I know you ain’t making any kinda demands at me all rude and harsh.” She’s got a knife she’s rolling over her knuckles like it’s a pen, that subtle kinda threat she loves so much. “Ain’t nothing you can tell me’s gonna get that traitorous little heretic free.” 

You make an abortive little move at your clubs like you wanna pull them on her but you stop just short and hiss at her instead. She’s not real impressed with you. Karkat’s looking real studiously at the floor of his cell, like if he pretends hard enough this shit’ll go away. You scramble to think. There’s gotta be  _ something _ , you can’t be so useless to not even be able to save your best motherfucking friend from execution. “He’s my moirail.” You blurt out, so desperate you don’t even think on it. You ignore the way Karkat’s head snaps up. He can yell at you when he’s safe. You just keep right on lying as the words come. “I didn’t know ‘bout family before, didn’t figure a motherfucker all rusty like him’d be safe around the church.” Her eyes have gone soft with pity, and hope springs up in your chest. You know quadrants get all kinda of exceptions and shit. “So we ain’t never registered, but-”

She puts a hand on your shoulder and there’s an oddness about her that you all of a sudden don’t like. “I’m so sorry, little brother.” No. “It’s a hard thing, I know.” Motherfucking  _ no. _ “The empress’s orders are clear in this.” Palemates are motherfucking  _ sacred, _ they can’t just- “Take the day. Say your goodbyes.”

***

_ The justyourhair is twining ‘round your wrists, coiling ‘round your legs. You can feel your face now, something smooth and hard resting on your cheekbones. You still can’t see. You could move, maybe, if you weren’t so tightly bound up in hair. It moves. You think sometimes it breathes. You try not to think about it. _

***

“If you think I’m leaving you and your grubshit glowing eyes and your stupid highblood horns you’re wrong.” You ignore his saltyass words and keep on herding him forward. The pods are stocked with a perigee’s rations for a crew of eight highbloods, his one single tiny lowblood self’ll be fine.“Gamzee- fucking,  _ listen to _ me.” he grabs your face and looks you dead in the eyes, and you have the weird notion that you can see his fear there more clearly even than you can feel it.“They will kill you. You have  _ no  _ fucking idea what-” You pap him right on his pitiable little face and he stutters into a rusty-cheeked mess.“ _ Gamzee-!” _ He hisses at you, all puffed up embarrassment.You’ve wanted to try that since you were six, see if he stopped shouting when someone got their gentleness on at him. Sucks you won’t get to do it again, but at least he’ll be alive.

“Nah, best friend, I got this,” you tell him, and pull your hand away regretfully, “it’ll be chill as all fuck. Ain’t near so many of us here to cull a brother on technicalities.” Lowbloods don’t get family, is the first thing you got taught here, they don’t understand it. Couple perigees back, you saw a big blue motherfucker thought he could seduce a sister into betrayal, didn’t realize she was playing him ‘till her matesprit got his head clean off his thoracic column, before that, Sirras used to tell you ‘bout some motherfuckers as tried to blackmail some high-ranking priest with pictures she’d sent her kismesis. They’d wanted her picking off the newest ascension wave. She’d laughed in their faces and published the pictures herself. Family is first and all here, and they’ll understand, this once. You saw sympathy in your sergentormentor’s eyes, giving you permission in all but words, some trick of fate means you ain’t gonna get him out all official and shit, but once they finish getting their shout on, it’ll be fine.They won’t hurt you, you know this. 

He goes to protest again but you’ve got him herded into the escape pod while he was distracted, and you know from stupid experience that that shit don’t unseal once you slap the big red button just inside, so you run your frondtips over his cheek one last time, guiltily greedy, and then you shove him so he lands on his ass in the pod, and you get that cover flipped up and that bigass red button pushed. You pull away quick, and by the time he’s scrambled to his feet, fists banging against the viewport, he’s sealed in and gonna stay sealed ‘till the sensors taste breathable air. You wave at him and try not to notice the terror or the tears, you just smile and watch him be ejected through the psionic airlock.

He doesn’t know Family like you do, it’s all gonna be fine.

***

_ They take you out of the nothing-place, hard hands on your shoulders, heavy claws on your wrists. You gag, cough, someone’s fist hits your back, just under your thoracic planes. You hack and choke and cough until what was in your lungs ain’t there no more. The air stings on your wrists, your shoulders, your arms, your legs, in bright, precise dots down your thorax. When they lift you by the arms, hands pressing incautiously at wounds you don’t remember, you start screaming.  _

***

Seyova don’t hit you, when she finds you sitting by the empty pod bay. You think maybe she wants to, ‘till you look up at her, remorseless and proud. “You’re a based motherfucking idiot, Makara.” She says, and the grin on your face fades some at the look in her eyes, scared for the first time since you met her three sweeps back, her in her last sweep of training and arrogant with it. “Little brother, you got  _ no _ idea what you’ve done.” 

“He wasn’t a traitor, sister.” You tell her, stubbornly. He is now, you guess, on account of it’s treason to not get executed when you’re told. “Never met any troll so enamored of the empire.” She’s just looking at you, sorrow and horror dawning in her and you don’t motherfucking  _ get _ it, you did what any one of them would’ve done, for a quadrant, and if he wasn’t.  _ They _ don’t know it. You don’t get why it’s such a big thing, one little rustblood. “It wasn’t  _ fair.” _

She closes her eyes and leans on the wall, looking at the empty space where the escape pod oughta be. “Stupid motherfucking wriggler.” There’s footsteps behind you, lots of them, all familiar treads. “You shouldn’t’ve stayed.”

***

_ You scream. You lash out with your pan, but it drains away like you didn’t even reach out at all. It hurts and you hurt and everything motherfucking  _ hurts. 

_ Time happens. Two new minds brush yours, screaming fear and pain, but littler, weaker. You reach out, desperately, and they snuff like candles in a breeze. _

***

They put you in the cell Karkat was in. They put his cuffs on you, and then for good measure, they put sleek psionic binders on as well, the kind made for highbloods. You don’t get why, you guess they’re trying to scare you, but you ain’t even struggling or nothing. 

Your brothers wander through, to look at you. Not a one of them talk. You try to reassure them that it’ll be okay, that you can take a touch of punishment gladly to save your palemate. They look at you with closed eyes and hunted stares and when you talk to them, they leave. 

You’re starting to feel lonely. It’s been three sweeps of company, you miss sprawling with your cohort in a big pile for studying and napping. You guess that’s part of the punishment. 

***

_ You find time to be angry. You find time to nurse the holiest rage you ever felt. You scream ‘till you can’t hear yourself no more, and you keep on screaming after that, ‘till there’s a little sting in your side, and you don’t feel anything for a while. _

***

There’s a trial. You’re not invited. 

***

_ The next time small minds brush yours, you lash out, enraged, hurting, but instead of snuffing out and leaving you alone to scream, fear crashes into you in waves, pain rolls over you like an earthquake. From the ruin of your throat you manage sound. Your screaming echoes through wherever you are. If it breaks into sobs, you’re the only one who knows.  _

***

“Apostate.” 

The word echoes in your ears. Despite yourself, your pumpbiscuit kicks up, your eyes widen. It hurts, to see their eyes looking on you, so. The high priests and the Highblood himself, with horns twinned to yours, looking on you with disappointed apathy. There’s more, sentencing and details of things you don’t need to know. This is a test. They want to know how far your faith goes. They just want to scare you. When they leave, you pack yourself into the corner of your cell and curl your knees up under your chin. 

They just want you scared, to learn your lesson. 

It’ll be okay.


	2. Penance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting the general warnings up top for this one. As always, mind the tags:  
> Heavy body horror warning (see end of chapter)  
> Eye squick  
> implied suicide(see end of chapter)

You drift for time beyond memory. Sometimes you struggle. Sometimes the rage crashes over you and you fight for nights, perigees,  _ sweeps. _ Sometimes it takes too much to even breathe, and you stop until your thorax demands it of you with enough urgency to heave a single breath. Sometimes your brothers come to visit. Sometimes Karkat comes. He always looks like he did when he left, you think. You can’t see him, not with your eyes, you think. But he’s there, bruised and hurting and crying like when last you saw him, even if you can’t hear him over the ragged breaths of the trolls to either side of you.

Sometimes, it hurts more, and sometimes the hoarse, painful breathing beside you stops. Sometimes it hurts less, and the ragged gasps turn to something that might be proper sleep. Sometimes there are hands on you, brisk, impersonal hands that do—  _ something _ , you can’t tell. Something that tugs at the unhealing wounds of your belly, your arms, the pinprick lines of your scalp. Sometimes it hurts less after the hands.

Sometimes there are other hands. The ones you can see without seeing, the way you can see Karkat. Those ones laugh at you, tug sharply at the holes in you, pull the hair that ain’t there anymore. Those ones whisper to you ‘ _ It’ll be okay, apostate.’ _

*  *  *

“Oh god. Gamzee,  _ fuck _ .” Hands on you, pulling on the holes in you in ways that make you whine, weak, hurting. “Shit. Sorry, sorry, it’s okay, I’ve got this, it’s going to be okay.” Your gut twitches. Air whooshes out of your dry mouth. It happens again, twice. “Why are you laughing, you pancracked shithive wreck?” Are you laughing? It’s pretty fucking funny, you guess. Karkat’s never told you it’ll be okay before, only the hands. It’s almost nice. His familiar bluster is something like comfort. “Come on, chucklefuck, I’ve got you.” Hands on your face, sliding over the pricklepain on your head, “this is sick, what the hell did they do to you?” something slides away from your face, crackling pain sears your ganderbulbs and you hiss and flinch away, close your eyes as tight as you have the strength for. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, I’m going to get you out of this.” You open your eyes a slit. What you can see of Karkat looks different than the last time he visited. Bulky walksuit, kinda shit the hull squads use. Blurred in the painful crackle of blue-gold-purple light of the block. Taller, like he hit one of his growth stages. Still motherfucking crying. He throws the helmet in his hands to the side.

Hands slide along your suspended arms. Time jumped weird and now Karkat’s standing close, near tall as you, talking viciously at himself. “Okay, focus, past me was a fucking idiot, why didn’t I listen to Sollux more? Not that that matters right now, how the fuck do I— hah!” something shifts in your arm. You twist your head slowly to watch a tendril of biowire slide out of the wound there. Shiny metal rings the purple pit where it’d been. Your gorge rises as Karkat presses his fingers into the next one, your shoulder. That one  _ hurts. _  Sharp and bright and unlike the hurt that’s been pressing on you this whole long time. Hurts like the time you were a wriggler and you broke your tooth uneven, and Karkat got Nepeta got Equius to yank the broken root out, all cleansing and opening kinda pain. Your pan hurts less, when you ain’t even knew it was hurting in among all the other hurts. The ship around you shudders, and some piercing screaming sound echoes around you. Karkat curses, glances back to the door all tense and scared, and pulls a short, thick blade out of a sheathe on his leg. “This is gonna suck.” He tells you, your belly twitches again and another silent laugh happens. Who even knows what sucking is anymore?

He braces a foot on the tangle of wires covering your knee, and that hurts, pressure where there ain’t been none in ages and ages. He catches hold of a handful of biowire and pulls himself up, and that hurts too, like your hair getting pulled, but deeper and more hurting, and in your fronds. “Sorry! Sorry!” is pressed at you like a prayer more than an apology, an absentminded mantra of a word as he hauls himself up into the tangle of biowire and enginestuff. The first cut is nothing. You feel it like slicing your hands on a rough bit of hull or some shit. The second one, you hardly notice. The third hits deep, like he’s cutting through bone and sinew and you flinch bad and struggle, your voice trying to scream as air hits your hand, and then his  hand wraps ‘round it, holding your fronds so tight that you can almost tell where you end and the engine begins. He cuts your arm off three times before he lets your hand go and it falls down to rest against your hip, fingers trembling some as royal-tyrian engine fluids stream from the sliced-off ends of the biowires still in you. Your other hand goes easier, not near so many wires attached still, and it’s like he’s removing fingers more’n the whole motherfucking limb. You notice when those are done, because you lurch forward, your arm suddenly loose, and are brought to a sudden, excruciating stop by the wires that wind ‘round your horns. Your whole support column lights up fire and pain, and you manage a hoarse, near-silent whine.

There’s the head-splitting clang of booted feet on the hall outside. Something stabs you between the eyes and you flinch and wheeze and struggle again. Karkat is apologizing in a way that makes you think he’s crying even more now. There’s the hiss of the block door getting slid open. Three trolls, two slim and armed with prods and psionic suppressors, one massive and strong, black iron spikes on their horns.

There’s a beat that stretches for hours. Your head pulled back like a sacrifice waiting on a blade, Their eyes, two sets of matched navy, one set of red-ringed purple. A spike shoves its way into your eye and  _ twists _ , and you writhe, your mouth open ‘round a scream your throat can’t make happen, and then something  _ snaps  _ and you lurch forward, blinking the pain away. Something heavy and limp falls against your back.

Karkat drops from the ceiling, arms wet to the shoulder in royal tyrian. You will yourself to struggle. The tethers ‘round your lower half loosen, and Karkat pulls you, drooping and swaying, out of the mess. He’s talking, but you can’t hear. Not the way you should. He sounds. Very far away. Everything is so far away. When you move your limbs, it’s like you’re puppeteering your own self. Movement pulls your attention back to the door of the helmsblock. Three trolls. You reach out. Six minds in the block. Your voodoos twist in your grip. Five minds in the block. You snarl, pain rising dull and aching in your pan. You pull hard at your memory of the ancestral powers granted to you.  Four minds in the block. Wide eyes rimmed in purple, hands on strifekind, too-bright light flicker-flashing on fangs snarling threat at you. You think your face twists to match theirs. A pulse of something echos through you echos through them echos through you. Everything flashes purple flashes white flashes black and the pain of your eyes is bright in the sea of hurting that’s you.

The eyes are gone. One mind in the block. 

Karkat’s hand, fever-hot on your wrist, pulls you. You follow.

Power gathers in you as you go, trails of purple that drip from your fingers, your arms, your face. Crackling lightning-bolts of power that sinks into the walls and the floor and the air, pushing and pulling and angry where plates buckle and walls break, and the air sizzles with the smell of blood and raw power. Karkat’s crying. His face is wet in a darker way than tears. He’s not looking at you, doesn’t see you in time to stop you reaching out, pressing clumsy fingers at the delicate skin beneath his ear. Slick and viciously bright, sticky underneath. He flinches and goes deadly still. He twists back to look at you, eyes all wide and scared and weird in a way you can’t place. You blink at him, slowly, uncomprehending. You tap your fingertips against the edge of his face. Your pan ain’t working so good just now but you think that’s how you fix a brother being all scared and shit. He makes a sound that hurts your chest and pulls your frond away from his face, hand gripping yours so tight his knuckles have gone white. His mouth moves like words are happening, but you can’t make out anything but noise. All that’s in your head is roaring and confusion.

*  *  *

The ship moves for you. Chitin siding twists and buckles as biowire burrows out and reaches at you, grasping, caressing, never catching. A door stands in front of Karkat and he pauses, and you feel the ever-constant fear in him flare hot and panicked. A door buckles and opens under a wall of purple light that sears your eyes. His hand on your wrist pulls. You go.

*  *  *

“Fuck.” The soft curse is so unlike what you expect from Karkat you don’t really hear it at first.

He’s stopped, though, and you bump into him a little absent, like an errant stingbag, there’s the escape pods, just beyond the door. But there’s a troll in the way. Bigger than you, purple-rimmed eyes.

Thinner than she should be.

You gather yourself around into a big, crackling aura of threat, half-instinctual. She’s here, and she don’t like Karkat, and you’ll protect him, is the only important thing right now. She looks at you, eyes sad, mouth twisted in something like a smile under her paint. She shifts her gaze over to Karkat, and her eyes harden, in a way that scares a small, distant part of you. She draws her clubs.

“Make it look good, heretic.” You. Don’t understand. You don’t understand what’s happening, other than Karkat’s got his short knife put away, and the brutal curve of his sickle is glinting purple in the light that’s coming off you. “I ain’t voiding my ticket on this.”

That little voice in you is thrashing panic and you gotta fight to stay, to see, to witness, like you think you gotta.

Karkat doesn’t move. You think he’s as confused as you are. She’s tense, hands tight on her clubs. A silent moment passes and she snarls, voice pitched to carry like a command, “Ready pod three. Prepare for emergency launch, full crew.” There’s a hiss of moving machinery, and she takes an angry step forward. “Let this be my motherfucking penance, faith-breaking false prophet.” Another step, voodoos gathering around her. “Let this be the righting of my wrongs. Pity be that I leave with my family fearful and worshiping the glittering gold of a false idol.” A third step and she’s in striking range of her clubs and still she don’t strike. “Let me—”

When Karkat moves, he’s too slow. You know it. You know down to your bones that he’s gonna die and this’ll be for naught.

There’s a soft grunt. An exhale like pain or laughter. A splash of color. That little voice in you cries out loss.

The second strike ends it quick, merciful.

There’s booted steps coming at you. Karkat grabs your hand, heedless of the purple lightning that grounds itself in him, and hauls you into the open pod door. He flips the cover up. Slaps that big red button. Your feet hit the wall when the engines kick in and you just. Rest there. Still shocked. Karkat seats himself at the mini nav station, stone-faced and drenched down his front in noble, royal purple.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Body horror:amputation(phantom limb), phantom eye damage, fanon-typical helmsman squick (tentacles, open wounds, things under skin)
> 
> Suicide:heavily implied that a fantroll had no intention of defending herself/intended to die as a 'penance'


	3. Been a lifetime, maybe two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings at the end, but it should just be more of the same from last chapter

You stay crumpled against the closed door for a long time. You are hurt, in ways you don’t quite understand yet, you’re bleeding tyrian from your limb-wires, seeping slow from imperial pink to royal violet to noble purple, and it’s then you realize they’re not yours, they’re  _ in _ you, and you move, weak and trembling, to tug desperately at one, gagging at the nausea and pain that shoots through your arm. There’s a curse and footsteps, and a warm, rough hand pulls your claws away from your skin so gently you could cry. “Don’t do that, you’ll rip yourself up, stupid.” His voice is quiet and sad and choked with the tears still staining his face, so you almost don’t recognize Karkat ‘till he scrubs the tears away with a grumpy fist and snaps impatient fingers in front of your nose. “Like this, watch.” He presses at the base, hard enough to hurt and you try to pull away, but he holds you firm, pressing ‘till you feel something disengage under your skin and the chopped-off biowire slides out, leaving a perfectly round wound ringed in metal. You grit your teeth and try the one on your thorax. It hurts. Nausea washes over you and you gotta close your eyes ‘cause this one’s as big around as your scrawny wrist and it motherfucking  _ hurts. _ But you’re left with another useless bit of horrorterror and a wound seeping purple and free of biowire. Karkat watches, you can’t read his face but that he’s upset. After a long silent minute, he reaches like to pat your shoulder, pauses, and pulls away without touching you. You pretend not to notice. There’s a wire-thin tendril on your wrist. You press at it ‘till it disengages and don’t wonder at Karkat’s face as he goes back to seat himself at the controls. 

It’s quiet but for the rumbling of subpsionic engines. Karkat doesn’t talk. You take some more tendrils out of your arms. The ones you can reach anyway. You don’t know how long it is before Karkat curses, sharp and loud, and you startle some. A rations hatch rattles and falls open with a clang and you jump and yelp. Try to yelp. All you get is a sore throat and a quiet rasp. “It’s supposed to fucking be  _ here. _ ” He slaps the controls and types something into the console all rapid-fire and scared under the anger. One of the tendril scraps writhes across the floor and slaps against his ankle. “Wh-ugh. These things are fucking gross.” He picks it up and tosses it away. “Gamzee, how are-  _ there you are you beautiful bastard. _ ” A notice has begun sounding over the speakers, a long ‘collision imminent’ trill that makes you hunker down against the door and try not to shake too obviously. Another ration hatch pops open. “Come on you piece of shit.” The hull around you rumbles and shudders and you press more against the wall and pretend to not exist. You’ve got all the biowire you can reach out of you, you can feel something sharp and heavy along your spine, but you can’t reach the ports, and as the alarm trills on, a wave of exhaustion hits you, and you find yourself blinking ever more slowly as you watch Karkat dance between the controls. It’s almost like he knows what they’re for. You curl yourself as tightly as you can and watch him through slitted eyes. You blink. He’s so big now. You remember him at your shoulder and sub-adult scrawny. Now he’s as big as you at least, and broader. You blink. A ship flickers into view ahead of you. Maybe an hour out. Karkat’s cursing takes a shade of something that might almost be glee. You blink. There’s a hand on your shoulder, a soft, gentle voice in your ear. His chitin is still sub-adult pale, like yours. He lifts you so his body is a warm, reassuring mass to lean on. When he talks you can feel the voice rumbling out of him. You press your face into the warm crook of his throat and he stumbles a little. Why’re you being carried? Ain’t you got feet and shit? You wiggle your toes just to be sure, and they wiggle well enough. You cling to Karkat instead of insisting on walking. Maybe he’ll stop holding you if you can walk? And the thought of him leaving you alone again makes the bottom drop out of your bilesack. The pod shudders around you and the heavy tendril still in your back twitches, writhes, and slaps Karkat in the face.  _ Sorry, _ you try to say, but all that comes out is breath. 

When he finishes spluttering, you hear one of those sharp, cut-off growls he used to make all the time, and words you don’t pay attention to, repeated a few times before there’s pressure between your vestigal wingstruts turns to sharp pain that makes you whimper and try to squirm away, until you feel the wire disengage with a click and a sick sliding sensation that makes you gag and slump against Karkat’s reassuring bulk. It takes longer than the other ones. It hits you that it was  _ deeper _ and you gag again, try not to imagine you can feel it retreating from your aeration sacs. Karkat’s arm is wrapped firmly around you, holding you against him, and you’re so grateful for the support you wanna sob, but you still can’t manage sound. There’s more. One at either hip that hurt near as bad as the big one, tiny ones around your horns you hardly notice him taking away, but for the pressure against the base of your horns. His other arm comes round to hold you more, fingertips smoothing over your face, your eyebrows, a soft, worried voice happening somewhere above your head. “-think that’s all of them, you’re okay, it’s okay.” That’s nice, that it’s okay. The hand is nice too, makes something relax in you, lets everything go soft. You blink muzzily at him, and fingertips become a palm all warm and a little damp from sweat, that you lean into so you can look up and smiiiiile at him. His eyes are bright and scared and worried. The pod stops rattling around you, and you realize that it’d been shaking pretty bad before that. His eyes soften, just a touch, and then widen again as the palm you were leaning into is snatched away. Before you can make your feelings on that known there’s the shock of docking tethers engaging, and the grind-hiss of airlocks engaging and pressure equalizing, and you’re being half-lead, half-carried out of the escape pod and into another ship. 

*  *  *

You can’t focus enough to figure who’s ship this is. Ain’t big, for all it’s still bigger than the pod was. Karkat tips you into a seat on the bridge. “Strap in. I’m going to have to do this fast.” He darts off to a terminal at the front before you can ask what’s ‘this’, he sits down at what you think’s the navigladiator’s station? You focus on the harness on the seat. It takes some work to get your fingers to do what you want. This is trickier than pushing on biowire, but you feel the magnets work their little miracles that slide the latch shut and the straps tighten on your shoulders. 

There’s a minute where you can’t breathe, the biowire tendrils are tightening around you again, the ship shudders around you and the air squeezes against you. The terminal Karkat sat you at- secondary targeting, you think, it’s been so long- sparks violet, powers half on, and then fizzles. You close your eyes, listen to Karkat’s muttering as he types furiously at his terminal, “-four-point-three-oh-eight, and then a secondary jump to eight-point-one-six-” you stop trying to focus, you just breathe and let his voice wash over you until the panic passes. You almost miss the click of Karkat’s harness engaging, and you open your eyes long enough to see him finish whatever he’s doing. The sublight engines engage, a low, almost reassuring hum that rumbles through the whole ship before Karkat does something else, flips a switch you don’t recognize, and the pitch climbs, higher and higher, to a pitch that makes you clap your hands over your ears, and higher still, ‘till it’s more a pressure than a sound, and then, as you start to get a sinking feeling of dread in your belly, he shoves a lever you don’t recognize forward, and the ship  _ screams _ around you and your seat lurches forward. 

You pass out, you think. You’re pretty sure, because when you come ‘round you’re all sagged against the straps of your harness. Karkat’s just as limp in his as you are. You struggle free of the straps, try to stand and go over right off. It takes you a minute to get the hang of it again. Of willing your limbs to move in a way that pushes you toward him. He’s mumbling and coming ‘round as you collapse on your knees next to him, patting frantically at his shoulders, his arms, his face, still he mumbles and groans and shoves your hands away and you go limp with relief. When his face stops scrunching and his eyes focus on you, they go wide, something strikes you as weird about’m all over again, but you don’t have time to figure out what, because the second you know he sees you clear and true, he bursts into tears and hurls himself at you, and you got an armful of crying troll, and you don’t know what to do but cling back, and bury your face in the crook of his throat, and hold and be held.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More general helmsman squick, (tentacles, open wounds, things under skin)
> 
>  
> 
> [Title from one of my favorite Gamzee songs.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omya6MeZ6gY)  
> Give that a listen and tell me it doesn't scream clown.


End file.
